The average person in most Western countries will have heard of the Ten Commandments listed in the Christian Bible and would be able to name at least half of them. People on the street would probably recite “Thou shalt not steal” or “Thou shalt not lie.” Another one of those categorical rules that is often easy to remember is “Thou shalt not kill.” Few people would generally disagree that killing another human is wrong. The exception, however, appears to be when the state is doing it to a criminal convicted of murder. This is the government’s attempt to prove that murder is wrong. The justification for capital punishment is allegedly another Biblical principle: an eye for an eye (lex talionis). If the United States of America truly believed in the Sixth Commandment, it would not hesitate to devote all the resources necessary, including U.S. troops, to the country of Ukraine to put an end to the atrocities being committed there by Russian forces since February 24, 2022. Furthermore, i

This article was intended for publication not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. When Russia began amassing troops on its border with Ukraine, the U.S. did precious little to discourage Vladimir Putin from sending more and more forces to surround its neighbor on three sides. This should have come as no surprise, considering how he basically waltzed into Crimea and encouraged separatists in the eastern part of the country in 2014 and suffered no major repercussions for his blatant disrespect for international law. Ever since Rootin’ Tootin’ Vladi Putin was handed the reins of power in 1999, he has been trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union, paving the road to that goal with decimated countries and dead bodies. For over 20 years, he has gotten away with countless murders and is hell-bent on committing more. From Chechnya to Georgia and now Ukraine, no territory that has ever been part of the Soviet empire is safe from Russian aggression. Since the fall of the USSR in 19